Nvidia chips power fastest supercomputer

Chips made by the Green Goblin are powering a supercomputer that the graphics chip supplier claims has achieved the fastest speeds to date.

The Chinese "Tianhe-1A" has hit 2.507 petaflops, using 7168 Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPUs and 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs. It beats another Chinese supercomputer also using Nvidia chips called Nebulae, which can manage 1.271 petaflops when the wind is behind it and it is going downhill. Nebulae is the second fastest in the world based on the Top500 June list.

Nvidia said that the "Tianhe-1A" will not only be the fastest but will also be greener. It only consumes only 4.04 megawatts, making it three times more power efficient than a CPU-only system.

Tesla chip marketing manager Sumit Gupta said applications of the "open science project" will include astrophysics, material science, and bio-chemistry. Nvidia is also working with laboratories and universities in the U.S.